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90

GenesisGamePro (US)

Shaq Fu can muscle its way close to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but the smallish Shaq sprites may keep some fighters at bay. However, spend the time to master Shaq's attacks and you'll gladly play the Fu.

80

SNESGamePro (US)

Delphine Software (of Flashback fame) programmed Shaq and the flowing digitized graphics are championship caliber. However, you must balance the hundreds of excellent, high-speed martial arts animations against the obvious trade-off of sprite size. The sounds have sizzle. The music breezes by, but the cool effects really stick it to you. Shaq's not going to fu the Street Fighter faithful, but he leads them into a good fight. He's definitely got the stuff.

79

GenesisGame Players

The animation is incredibly fluid and there's no denying that almost everything looks great. But waiting for all those frames of animation to play after each move means that Shaq Fu also has some pretty sluggish control - a near fatal problem for a fighting game.

77

SNESGame Players

On the plus side, the game looks great. The character designs are unique and interesting and you gotta admit that even if they're tough to use, the moves are all pretty cool. And hey, the game's go Shaq, which you can't say about any other games right now. I just sort of wish the gameplay lived up to it all.

Shaq Fu works as both a single and multiplayer game. It's not perfect and the gameplay may turn some gamers away, but adventure is long and I enjoyed the detailed backgrounds and memorable cast of characters. I also think the animation looks incredible, even two decades later. Guilty pleasure or not, Shaq Fu is a lot of fun.

The art throughout is generally good, but the half-cartoony look of the main character ruins his personality; at no point in the game does this guy look like Shaquille O'Neal! On the pre-fight match-up screen he looks like George Jefferson; on the portrait in the corner during a fight he looks like Homer Simpson. No offense, but the game's stylized art does contradict the realism of the digitized animation. Some nice features, some excellent animation, but real fighting game fans will consider this one Shaq Phooey.

60

GenesisVideo Games & Computer Entertainment

I had higher hopes for these games, though, because of the reputation of developer Delphine Software (of Flashback and Out of this World fame.) Unfortunately, Delphine's trademark of super-fluid character animation has limited the size of the fight-megabits, bot the SNES and Genesis versions have characters that look like midgets compared to most other fighting games.

In the end, there really isn't anything offered by Shaq-Fu that builds on similar games in the genre. Unless you really love Shaq and believe that this game could be a collector's item, there are much better fighting games out there. This was probably a bad idea to begin with: a basketball player in a fighting game? What's next? Michael Jordan in a side-scrolling action game? Wait a minute....that has been done!

First Michael, not Shaquille. Shaq-Fu has some nice options to throw off the monotony of the average fighting game, but this game just isn't anything truly special. The moves are average and the tunes are just okay. The animation of the characters, however, is quite excellent, but hey, that's Delphine for ya. I guess if you need to see Shaq while B-ball season is over, Shaq-Fu might be your thing.

50

GenesisSega-16.com

In the end, it's not a horrible game and has good animation, nice yet underdeveloped characters, a simple fight scheme (which could be good or bad), and catchy music. It can get boring quickly though, with the easiness of the matches, and the generic storyline. The only thing that seems to really make it a form of ridicule and hold it down is its star. I'm looking at you Mephis!

Overall, Shaq-Fu is a game surpassed by other fighters in many ways. The only reason to play this game is to experience how bad a plot or premise can be, and to get a good laugh or two about it with your friends.

Plus, the music is all wrong. Shaq is a rap star, right? So wouldn't it have made sense to have a rap soundtrack — or a vague approximation thereof — rather than the techno-dojo sludge that clutters so many similar fighting games? When you have talent on hand, use it. (At least the Genesis version comes bundled with a CD single from Shaq's second album, Shaq Fu-Da Return.) All that said, what's saddest about Shaq-Fu is the squandered opportunity it represents.

What about the real point of the game — the action? It only goes to prove that years after the arrival of Capcom's Street Fighter II, rival software companies still have no idea how to program a fighting game. Although Shaq himself is digitized competently enough, he's a relatively small, unintimidating onscreen presence, and some of his opponents (especially in the Genesis version) are downright minuscule. Adding to the aggravation factor is the unrealistic play: Shaq and his pals tumble through the air so hyperkinetically that it's difficult to get close enough to opponents to strike a blow.

Well, it’s simple: there is absolutely no piece-of-crap fighting game that crappier than Shaq-Fu, and I defy you to find one that sucks more. I don’t know what the hell Shaquelle was thinking when he came up with this one. Please, readers. Whatever you do, don’t follow my lead and waste your energy looking for it, and if EA knew what was good for them, they would found the wasteland where ET was buried and made room for this trash.

I came to this game expecting an embarrassing disaster, and that's exactly what I got. Avoid this thing. I know the kids used to look up to Shaq as a role model, but I seriously hope no one expects him to be the Chosen One. If he were, his showcasing of skills in this game are enough to prove that we'd be taken over by nasty pharaohs any time they damn well please.

Apparently Shaquille O'Neil has an interest in the martial arts that he wants to inflict upon the rest of the world! Too bad for us! This shallow one-on-one fighter lets you play as Shaq himself performing Kung Fu against exotic warriors and occult creatures. At best, Shaq Fu comes off as a third-rate Street Fighter clone. Its design is typical, but the characters are surprisingly small and not very well balanced. Thanks to a lack of moves and lousy controls, each bout degenerates into a button mash-a-thon. The special moves seem very similar to Street Fighter 2 (*cough*rip-off*cough*), and the bouts tend to run for far too long. Besides challenging a friend, you can also indulge in a story mode which is basically a string of CPU battles intertwined with some laughable cut scenes. I tend to enjoy fighting games, but Shaq Fu clanks off the rim like one of Shaq's foul shots.